Russia in the Baltic Sea Region
Desecuritization or Deregionalization?
VIATCHESLAV MOROZOV
ABSTRACT
Relations between Russia and the Baltic States — the weakest link in
the Baltic Rim — have significantly improved since 2000. One of the
explanations for this improvement is the fact that in contemporary
Russian political discourse national identity is desecuritized. The role of
the Baltic states has radically changed: they are no longer considered as
an embodiment of the ‘false’, anti-Russian Europe. However, despite
the desecuritization of national identity, security as the model of structuring and governing the ‘external’ world still dominates political discourse. The preponderance of the war against terrorism as discursive
articulation, as well as the modernist nature of President Putin’s political project, leads to the marginalization of the Baltic Sea area on the
political agenda. Some new departures in Russia’s policy as regards the
Baltic Sea area are possible, however, once Russia has gone through its
election campaign, and the enlargements of NATO and the EU are
complete.
Keywords: desecuritization; discourse analysis; Estonia; identity; Latvia;
Lithuania; Russia; security; terrorism
It would not be an exaggeration to say that relations between Russia and
the Baltic states (Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania) are crucial for the very
existence of the Baltic Sea region (BSR) as such. The raison d’être of the
region-building project at its inception was the need to deal with the Soviet
legacy; now, when the Baltic states and Poland are in the European Union
(EU), the only major gap to be bridged is the one between the EU and
Russia. The Baltic Rim will be broken without Russia, and it would require
a substantial redefinition of the entire concept of the BSR to make it applicable to whichever regional cooperation may take place instead. Russian
engagement, in turn, will hardly be effective if the weakest link of the Rim
fails and meaningful communication between Moscow and the three Baltic
capitals, still excessively dependent on political contingencies, becomes
impossible.
In an attempt to evaluate the prospects for Russia’s participation in the
Baltic Sea region-building process, I concentrate on the role played by the
Baltic states in Russian political discourse. Clearly, the BSR provides a
unique opportunity to develop relations in the spirit of new Europe,1 where
Cooperation and Conflict: Journal of the Nordic International Studies Association
Vol. 39(3): 317–331. Copyright ©2004 NISA www.ps.au.dk/NISA
Sage Publications www.sagepublications.com
0010-8367. DOI: 10.1177/0010836704045207
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state sovereignty and state borders have ceased to be the only principal
markers of identity. In the Baltic Sea area, it is possible to open new political spaces and work out new identities based on historical narratives, geographical images and shared cultural values, which would not substitute
national identity, but would enable us to build new links and overcome the
old conflicts. In my view, it makes a difference whether we address such
issues as environment, cross-border crime, migration, etc., on the basis of
the well-established national identities or as inhabitants of the BSR. In the
latter case, this new transnational identity turns any problem into ‘ours’,
and moves us from the discourse of external threats to a pragmatic, problem-oriented approach.
This new post-territorial attitude to politics requires a significant transformation of political discourse. One of the most important prerequisites
for that is desecuritization — a term introduced by the so-called
Copenhagen School (see Buzan et al., 1998), and referring to the process
whereby interaction becomes centred on issues other than security, while
security as such is actually enhanced by avoiding the language of security. I
have argued elsewhere (Morozov, 2002) that contemporary Russian political discourse tends to securitize the identity of Russian society: identity
becomes a referential object of a security discourse, which inevitably leads
to a defensive position vis-a-vis the ‘outside’ world and to a never-ending
process of constructing a boundary between ‘us’ and ‘them’, good and evil,
and an acute fear that if this boundary is damaged the identity of the community will be destroyed — ‘we’ will no longer be ‘us’. Needless to say, such
a discursive setting is hardly conducive to openness and debordering, and
views any identities other than the identity of the nation, which is understood as a given and sometimes even sacred community, with utmost
suspicion.
In this article I argue that in contemporary (post-9/11) Russian political
discourse national identity is desecuritized, which inter alia leads to an
improvement of relations with the Baltic states. NATO enlargement is no
longer described as a threat, and in general the role of the Baltic states has
radically changed: they are no longer considered as an embodiment of the
‘false’, anti-Russian Europe — a discursive construction described by Iver
Neumann (1996). In order to demonstrate this important change, in the
next section I briefly return to the period of uneasy bilateral relations in
1998–2001 to describe the impact of the identity crisis. In section three I
deal with the symptoms of identity desecuritization in Russia’s approach to
its relations with the Baltic states, and show that the old confrontational discursive patterns are no longer valid. In the fourth section I put the problem
of Russian–Baltic relations in a more general context, arguing that despite
the desecuritization of the national identity, security as the fundamental
model of structuring and governing the ‘external’ world is still there. The
overwhelming form of security discourse today is the war against terrorism,
which leads to marginalization of the Baltic Sea area in relation to other
items on the political agenda and makes the new discourses of openness
and post-territoriality even more peripheral than they used to be. There are
additional obstacles in the way of the region-building project, the most
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important of which seems to be the extremely modernist nature of
President Putin’s political project, mainly structured according to the logic
of national interest. The conclusion, however, suggests that certain new
departures in Russia’s policy as regards the Baltic Sea region-building project can be possible once Russia has gone through its election campaign,
and the enlargements of NATO and the EU are complete.
The Baltic States as ‘False’ Europe
The breakdown of the USSR caused an acute identity crisis in Russia,
because, unlike the rest of the former Soviet republics, the Russian
Federation as a state and a nation had no anchoring in the past which could
be read separately from the history of the Russian Empire and the Soviet
Union. Facing, in addition, a total economic collapse and extreme political
instability, Yeltsin’s leadership chose the easiest way to answer the question
‘What is Russia?’ They opted to define Russia as the successor-state of the
Soviet Union, and also implicitly of the Russian Empire (Matz, 2001). A
complete break with the Soviet past was ruled out, which gave the Russian
Federation a historical foundation for its new nation-building project.
However, the repercussions of this decision were wide-ranging and often
disturbing.
One immediate consequence was that the Russian nation tended to be
redefined in neo-imperial terms, while attempts to create a civic political
community were for a while unsuccessful (Tolz, 1998). This neo-imperial
community included the ‘compatriots abroad’, i.e. the Russian speakers in
the former Soviet republics, which made their rights a hot issue in Russia’s
relations with Latvia, Estonia and, to a lesser extent, Lithuania. Russia’s
concern for the ‘compatriots’ was obviously unacceptable from the point of
view of the Baltic nationalisms, since it was perceived as undermining the
independence of the three Baltic republics. In addition, Russia started to
claim for itself the role of the guarantor of security and stability in the
entire post-Soviet space, which led to Moscow’s staunch opposition to
NATO enlargement. The possible accession of Estonia, Latvia and
Lithuania to NATO was perceived as an almost existential threat, since it
would signify an intrusion of the ancient adversary into the lands that had
been part of imperial Russia for centuries.
The total negation of the Soviet past, which was an important part of
nation-building in all three Baltic republics, manifested itself, inter alia, in
legal proceedings against the veterans of the Soviet army and security
services, and sometimes even in demands on Russia for compensation for
the damage inflicted by the Soviet occupation. For the same reason of identity politics, these symbolic moves caused outrage in Russia (see Moshes,
1999: 31; Morozov, 2003: 230–1, 235–6). Hostility towards the Baltic states
was also encouraged by the fear — not totally unfounded — of possible isolation from Europe, which has always been one of the major driving forces
behind Russian foreign policy. Paradoxically, criticism against Riga, Tallinn
and Vilnius was in part a discursive practice aimed at securing Russia’s own
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European identity. It can be conceptualized using Iver Neumann’s terminological opposition of ‘true’ Europe versus ‘false’ Europe, which he traces
several centuries back (see Neumann, 1996). Russian discourse always constructs a ‘true’, friendly Europe, which represents, in a sense, a projection of
Russian values and priorities, and dismisses the ‘hostile’ Europe as having
lost the genuine European values, violating the rules established by and for
itself — this construction is described by Neumann as ‘false’ Europe. The
list of historical examples of the two opposing Europes includes Moscow as
the ‘third Rome’ versus the ‘infidel’ catholic West, the legitimate Europe of
the Holy alliance versus the ‘barbarian’ Europe of the revolutionaries, the
‘peoples’ ’ Europe of the Soviet ideologues versus a Europe of the capitalist monopolies, controlled by the US. This complex structure of the world as
it looks from Russia always makes it possible to dismiss certain political
positions as being ‘falsely European’ and to insist on the role of the Russian
state as the defender of ‘true’ European values. By singling out the Baltic
states as the black sheep of the European family, Russa could establish
itself as a ‘normal’ European nation, which might have some internal problems (Chechnya being the foremost example), but they were forgivable if
compared to the even greater, it was argued, sins of others (Morozov, 2003).
This strategy was hardly successful internationally, but worked almost perfectly on the domestic political stage.
The role of ‘false’ Europe was assigned to the Baltic states as early as the
beginning of the 1990s, but most actively this pattern was exploited in
1998–2000, when bilateral relations were extremely strained. After the crisis in Russian–Latvian relations, which was provoked by the dispersal of a
demonstration of Russian-speaking pensioners in Riga in March 1998 and
aggravated by the annual march of the Waffen-SS veterans, Russian diplomats, politicians and journalists systematically accused the authorities of
the Baltic states of harbouring pro-Nazi sympathies, in language which was
later described by two Russian journalists as belonging to the time of the
Second World War (Kalashnikova and Kalashnikov, 2001). The support for
the Chechen cause, so unreservedly expressed by some political forces in
the Baltic states, has been interpreted by the Russian press both as proof of
the prevailing anti-Russian mood in the Baltics and as an extra indication
of the wickedness of the Chechens. The two arguments were thus mutually
reinforcing. More or less the same can be said as regards the prospects of
NATO membership for the three Baltic countries. The desire of the Baltic
states to become members was interpreted as an extra proof of their antiRussian inclinations, and vice versa, any statement on behalf of the NATO
members confirming their willingness to admit the Baltic republics was
taken as an indication of ‘NATO expansionism’ (Sokolov, 2000). Moreover,
‘the sympathy for Ichkeria’ (i.e. Chechnya), demonstrated by Lithuanian
politicians, and the desire ‘to hurry with hustling the country into NATO’
were presented as complementary policies (Paip, 1999), while cooperation
with Russia, according to the Russian authors, inevitably was to be phased
out as the Baltic states developed friendly relations with the US. And vice
versa, ‘a possible rejection or at least a delay in accepting these countries
into NATO’ could, in the opinion of St. Petersburg-based analysts,
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321
‘contribute to an improvement of Russia’s relations with Estonia, Latvia
and Lithuania’ (Beltiukov and Pikhtov, 2001: 1).
As late as in early 2002, browsing the Russian press, one could still come
across numerous articles structured fully in accordance with the logic of the
opposition between ‘true’ and ‘false’ Europe and asserting, for instance: ‘as
long as the Russian population is oppressed in the Baltic countries, Russia
will not cease to remind European organisations and blocs who is going to
be accepted in their ranks’ (Vinogradov, 2002). No less typical for this discourse was the comparison between the status of the Russian language in
Estonia (‘false’ Europe) and that of the Swedish language in Finland — one
of the most indisputable embodiments of the ‘true’ Europe (see
Shesternina, 2002, cf. Narochnitskaya, 2003: 58). The zero-sum game logic
prevailed even in some academic writings: thus, Arkady Moshes of the
Institute of Europe described NATO enlargement as a net loss for Russia,
which it should have tried to prevent if it could (Moshes, 2002). Security was
still the central paradigm, while security threats were customarily associated with NATO. Being part of the ‘false’ Europe, the Baltic states were a
security threat for Russia in military terms (because of their intention to
join NATO), but most importantly their existence was a challenge to
Russian national identity as it had been formed by the end of the 1990s. It
was evidence of Russia’s weakness as compared to its imperial predecessors, and in addition the Balts were trying to deny Russia’s belonging to
Europe by criticizing it over Chechnya and on a number of other issues. The
fact that they were far ahead of Russia in integrating into European structures, despite the alleged violations of the rights of the Russian-speakers,
raised the fear that Russia was being deliberately isolated and ostracized,
and thus its European identity, often challenged from within, received
insufficient affirmation from the outside world.
From the ‘False’ Europe to the ‘New’ Europe
However, already in 2001 there were signs that the position of the Baltic
states in Russian political discourse was changing. An article by Viacheslav
Yelagin in the April issue of Mezhdunarodnaya zhizn’, despite being an
inventory of Russian charges against Estonia as ‘false’ Europe, asserted in
the conclusion that putting today’s Russia, ‘which gave freedom to the
Baltic peoples’, on an equal footing with the Soviet Union was ‘inappropriate’, since ‘the Russian people suffered from Stalinism no less [than the
Estonians]’, and suggested that ‘Russia would like to build its uneasy relations with the Baltic republics not on the basis of the psychological complexes of the Soviet period’ (2001: 58). A significant attempt to reflect upon
the fundamental assumptions of the Russian discussion about Estonia was
undertaken by Marina and Viktor Kalashnikov in their June 2001 article in
Nezavisimaya gazeta (Kalashnikova and Kalashnikov, 2001). Since then,
Estonia seems to have been acquiring a very special standing in the Russian
discourse, moving towards becoming part of ‘true’ Europe. This is happening against the general background of desecuritization of relations between
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Russia and the group of states usually described as ‘the West’, and, accordingly, between Russia and the Baltic states. The outcome of the NATO summit in Prague in November 2002, which decided to accept seven new
members including Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania, did not provoke any significant negative reaction even on the part of the traditionally nationalist
papers like Nezavisimaya gazeta. A balanced, business-like approach is
characteristic of the publications about the preparations for accession, and
such potentially hot issues as the construction of radars in Latvia and
Estonia in the framework of the Baltnet system (Shegedin and Vodo, 2003).
What is more, the same publications raise the issue of the state and
prospects of Baltic–Russian military cooperation (Yuryev, 2002) — an obvious departure from the zero-sum security logic characteristic of the period
1998–2001.2
The Chechen theme also figures in the current debate, but the boundary
between ‘us’ and ‘them’ in the description of the conflict has completely
shifted. When the website of the Chechen separatists Kavkaz-centre was
removed by the Estonian and Lithuanian authorities from servers, and the
separatist representatives called this the action of ‘gangsters’, the accounts
of the events in the Russian press left no doubt that the Russian journalists
regarded Estonia and Lithuania as part of the civilized world, while the
‘gangsters’ were to be found on the other side of this conflict (Volkhonskii
and Vodo, 2003). Even more interesting is the trend to interpret the experience of post-Soviet Estonia as a model for Russian society. Only such a
restructuring of the discourse can explain the fact that a brand of paint can
be advertised in the St. Petersburg metro with, inter alia, references to the
‘Estonian technology’ which is allegedly used in its manufacture.3 The most
popular topic seems to be the reform of the housing sector — a painful
issue for present-day Russia. An article in Izvestia on the Estonian housing
reform featured a characteristic title: ‘It is already far from Moscow to
Tallinn’ (Sagdiev, 2002; see also Ivanov, 2003a).
All these examples show that, today, Estonia, and perhaps on its heels
also Lithuania and Latvia, is increasingly perceived in Russia as part of the
‘true’ Europe, from which Russia can learn without any damage to its own
prestige. Old disagreements are still there, but it is clear that Russia no
longer needs them to promote its European identity. On the contrary, the
image of the Baltic republics as the closest part of Europe to Russia, which
existed even during the Soviet era, now seems to be undergoing a revival.
Russians today are ready to accept that Estonia is ahead of their own country in many important respects (‘it is far from Moscow to Tallinn’), and the
above reference to the ‘Estonian technology’ is reminiscent of the muchquoted word evroremont (‘Euro-repairs’), which means not simply a firstclass refurbishing of an apartment, but maintenance of a higher quality than
is usually done in Russia. On the other hand, the fact that evroremont, as it
were, turned out to be feasible not only in the remote ‘West’, but in some of
the former Soviet republics, in a part of ‘our’ Europe, is encouraging: it
shows that Russia, after going through economic hardships of the same
nature as Estonia, but perhaps on a larger scale because of a less advanta-
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323
geous starting position, is liable to undergo a similar economic and social
revival.
Another important shift is visible in Russia’s official position in relation
to ‘compatriots’ abroad. The 1999 law ‘On the state policy of the Russian
Federation in relation to the compatriots abroad’ (Rossiiskaya Federatsiya,
1999) in effect defines ‘compatriots abroad’ as all former citizens of the
Soviet Union who live outside Russia but identify politically with the
Russian state, regardless of their present citizenship. The ‘compatriots’ who
were Russian citizens were expected to take part in the Russian national
elections, and all of them were supposed to unite on the basis of their
Russian political identity — at least their unwillingness to act as a unified
force at the local elections in Estonia in 1999 was interpreted as a failure
(Morozov, 2003: 233). During Yeltsin’s era, the emphasis was on protecting
the rights of the ‘compatriots’ in the countries where they lived, and this
emphasis is clearly reflected in the law. The conceptual background for
this, explicitly stated in the preamble to the law and emphasized in the
public discussion (e.g. Shushanikov, 2001), was the principle of continuity:
the Russian Federation declared itself not only the legal successor of the
USSR, but a ‘continuer-state’ (prodolzhatel’) of the Russian Empire, the
1917 Russian Republic, the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic
and the USSR. Thus, the Russian nation was imagined in neo-imperial and
potentially irredentist terms, which undermined the legitimacy within
Russian political discourse of the independence of the 14 states created
from the ruins of the Soviet Union and thus created additional tension in
relations with them and in particular with the Baltic states.
In Putin’s Russia, the neo-imperial identity has become in some respects
even stronger: the old Soviet anthem has been reintroduced with new
words as the state anthem of the Russian Federation, while Soviet retro
dominates some important segments of popular culture, in particular television. However, this new version of the neo-imperial identity seems to be
broadly compatible with Baltic independence: it is telling that in describing
his vision of a ‘liberal empire’, which Russia is destined to create on the
ruins of the Soviet Union, Anatoly Chubais (2003) clearly limits his design
to the Commonwealth of Independent States, leaving the Baltic states to
the EU. In the state policy in relation to the ‘compatriots’, the emphasis has
shifted from making their rights an issue on the foreign policy agenda into
encouraging the Russian-speakers to migrate to Russia as a means of offsetting the demographic crisis. This move, the first major evidence of which
was President Putin’s speech at the Congress of Compatriots in October
2001 (Putin, 2001), even if it was motivated by purely pragmatic reasons, has
signified a fundamental change in the official nationalism from an imperial
to a civic model: the members of the Russian nation are invited to reside on
the territory of the present-day nation-state, while the state’s promise to
protect their interests outside the national territory is played down. The
new stricter citizenship law, adopted in 2001 (Rossiiskaya Federatsiya,
2001), is also framed according to the principles of civic nationalism — one
of the major reasons for the adoption of the new law, according to its author
Oleg Kutafin, was to stop ‘mechanically regarding as citizens of Russia all
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the former citizens of the USSR’ (Airapetova, 2001, see Tolz, 2004 for a
detailed discussion on Putin’s approach to Russian national identitybuilding). This has led to a more benevolent attitude to the integration of
ethnic Russians in Estonia and Latvia — i.e. to their leaving the ranks of the
‘compatriots’ and turning into loyal citizens of their respective states. This
new attitude, already discernible in the earlier quoted article by Viacheslav
Yelagin (2001: 56), was manifest in the fact that the defeat of the ethnic
Russian parties at the parliamentary elections in Estonia in September
2002 did not cause any negative reaction in Russia (see, e.g., Ivanov, 2003b;
Suslov, 2003) — while two or three years earlier this would certainly have
been interpreted as a disaster.
Even the split of Europe into the ‘old’ and the ‘new’ over the attitude to
the Iraqi war in 2003 did not thwart this discursive transformation. One
might have expected this new division would be superimposed upon the old
one, between the ‘true’ and ‘false’ Europe, and would strengthen the existing discursive constellation, especially in view of the fact that the core countries of the ‘false’ Europe, including the Baltic states, supported President
Bush’s Iraqi adventure. If this was the case, it was limited to the most
extreme applications of geopolitics by such authors as Natalia
Narochnitskaya (2003: 57–63). Surprisingly enough, in the mainstream discourse the two matrices apparently did not coincide in certain crucial
respects, and therefore the emergence of the ‘new’ Europe helped to
destroy the image of the dangerous ‘false’ Europe even further. The desire
of the political elites of the NATO and EU candidate countries to support
the US at all costs was interpreted in Russia as a manifestation of the ‘new’
Europe’s immaturity, but not of its hostility. A Kommersant article on the
results of the referendum on EU membership in Poland plays with subtle
differences between the Russian and Polish languages: the title ‘the Poles
have made their way to become Europeans’ uses the Polish word
Europejczyk, which, in the Russian transcription, acquires a funny diminutive meaning (Vodo, 2003). This patronizing attitude is perfectly reflected in
an illustration to an article in Expert Severo-Zapad on the development of
stock markets in the Baltic countries. The drawing features three boys
launching a toy ship with the symbol of the euro on its sail in a puddle in
the centre of an old European town (Krasil’nikova, 2003). Despite the fact
that the piece itself had no connection with the conflict over Iraq and had
been published before the very term ‘new Europe’ came into existence, this
illustration anticipated the interpretation of the ‘new’ Europe in Russian
political discourse as a Europe which is young, immature, still coming into
being — and whose mistakes therefore can be understood and even
excused.
The Limits of Desecuritization
The modification of Russian political discourse in relation to the Baltic
states is an indication of a more general socio-political transformation
which took place during President Putin’s first term in office. It can be
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325
described as desecuritization of Russia’s national identity, at least in as
much as it was constructed in opposition to the West. As previously argued,
there has been a visible degree of restorationism in Putin’s handling of
political symbols, the result being that Russian identity today is deeper
rooted in the past, while the two empires — the Russian and the Soviet —
are less and less differentiated in historical mythology. Paradoxically or otherwise, this has not led to a revival of the old Soviet-era fears that previously produced the ‘besieged fortress’ mindset. On the contrary, this
re-anchoring of today’s Russian Federation in the 1000-year long history of
the Russian state has alleviated the anxiety about Russia’s belonging to
Europe and to the ‘civilized world’. Russia today is much less of an
unknown quantity than it was 10 years ago; it is more a ‘normal’ European
state that has been around for as long as almost any of the other European
nations.
Desecuritization of national identity has not, however, resulted in the
abandoning of security as a discursive mode. It may, indeed, be argued that
this desecuritization was only possible because the place of the now redundant enemy — the West and/or NATO — has been taken over by a new
one, usually referred to as terrorism. It is important to emphasize that this
enemy was already there in 1999 — indeed, it was the promise to fight it
tooth and nail that brought Vladimir Putin a great share of his enormous
popularity in the run-up to the presidential elections of 2000. At that time,
however, the existence of the terrorist threat could only exacerbate the
already severe identity crisis in which Russia found itself towards the end
of the Yeltsin era. Criticism of the second Chechen campaign on the part of
most of Russia’s neighbours in Europe, the US and international organizations like the Council of Europe and the EU produced a feeling of total isolation, of Russia’s having to fight a lone hand against both the terrorists and
their ‘Western advocates’. After September 11, on the contrary, this enemy
is shared with ‘the West’, and this has finally created conditions suitable for
refocusing security discourse on referential objects other than national
identity — now, it is the ‘civilized world’ which is threatened by the terrorists, and this broader ‘we’ includes the old Other, ‘the West’.
Today Russia is a crucial member of the antiterrorist coalition: it closely
cooperates with the EU and NATO and thus feels itself part of the ‘civilized
world’ (see Morozov, 2002). Russia no longer needs to lash out at the Baltic
states, or to construct any other kind of ‘false’ Europe, in order to feel a better European. A much more self-assured patronizing position in relation to
the ‘new’ Europe was made possible only due to the fact that Russia could
safely side with the ‘old’ Europe, including such traditional partners (members of the ‘true’ Europe) as France and Germany. Thus, national identity
has apparently been desecuritized, but security as a discursive form through
which the ‘extremely unstructured universe’ of the post-Cold War world is
being structured and governed (Wæver, 1995: 75) is still there.
It would be beyond the scope of this article to consider the impact this
new situation is likely to have on individual rights and freedoms — in
Chechnya, in Russia, or at the global level. In the BSR, though, the new setting provides a unique opening for building transnational networks that
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would consolidate this desecuritized environment. However, there are still
several important obstacles in the way, many of which directly result from
a very special kind of identity transformation that has occurred in the area
during the past several years.
First of all, it has to be kept in mind that security as a discourse, which has
become even more powerful after September 11 and the ensuing wars,
tends to structure political space in a certain way. Instead of making borders
less exclusive and turning them into interfaces for interaction, ‘we’ are
increasingly concerned with building barriers to protect ‘us’ from ‘them’.
Such an environment could hardly be described as conducive to new postterritorial political developments which could transcend national borders
and create new identities, such as a feeling of belonging to the Baltic Sea
area. Besides, the BSR can offer very little in the fight against terrorism, and
therefore is marginalized in the discourse on global issues.
Secondly, one should consider the nature of borders that are to be transcended in each case. National identity in all three Baltic states is constructed around the idea of independence, central to which is a strong
historical narrative of dependence and oppression by a named powerful
neighbour — Russia. Russia, in turn, cannot accept any outside criticism of
its imperial history, since it serves, now more than ever, as the basis of
national identity. Despite the fact that in the official statements the Baltic
states tend to be described as part of the outside world, the tension between
this position and the imperial narratives is still discernible. Although the
recent experience shows that the legacy of the past can be overcome, the
historical myths can again be invoked if a conflict breaks out, or when the
political situation necessitates a reassertion of national identity. The 2003
election campaign produced exactly such a need, and the old discursive
model was reactivated by the political actors competing for the role of the
best defender of national interest. The tension steadily intensified and culminated in the statements like the one made by the chairman of the State
Duma Foreign Affairs Committee Dmitry Rogozin that Latvia had become
a land of ‘hooligans’ run by Nazis (RFE/RL, 2003), and in the Duma resolution condemning Latvia for the violations of the rights of the Russianspeakers, adopted on 14 October (e.g. Rodin, 2003).
Thirdly, it is becoming increasingly clear that Putin’s project is best
described as modernist and nationalist. Putin’s main message, unambiguously declared in his May 2003 state of the nation address, is the consolidation of the entire society around an ambitious patriotic goal — to make sure
that ‘in a not too far off future, Russia will take its recognized place among
the ranks of the truly strong, economically advanced and influential
nations’ (Putin, 2003). His framework concept is the national interest, and
even the most ‘globalist’ project of today’s Russia — WTO membership —
is conceived of in those terms. Against this background the possibility of
developing contemporary Russian political discourse into something more
postmodern is extremely problematic.
The fourth obstacle is to a large extent a result of the third. It consists in
the fact that in the Russian image of the BSR, imagination as such is lacking. The economic potential of the region is appreciated by many, but one
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would have a difficult time trying to figure out how the political and economic elite of the country is going to turn this potential into a working
model of cooperation. Many Russian scholars are prepared to argue at
length in favour of transnational regional cooperation (e.g. Fedorov, 2002:
32–8), but the positive effect of such calls is usually limited to the promotion of a desecuritized image of regional cooperation as not threatening the
territorial integrity of the Russian Federation. This discursive practice has
been largely successful — a positive attitude to transborder cooperation
prevails among policy-makers. However, this discourse is also structured
around the fundamental concept of the national interest: according to the
Chairman of the Foreign Affairs Committee of the Federation Council
Mikhail Margelov (2003), Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov, as well as the governors — members of the State Council (State Council, 2003: 9, 13–17), the
task of transborder cooperation is to help realize the foreign policy strategy
of the centre. Despite the fact that the international activity of the regions
is no longer a security concern, security as a basic cognitive frame is still
there: at the meeting of the State Council in January 2003, entirely devoted
to international issues, the international situation is described in terms of
the growing threats stemming from ‘military and political uncertainty’ and
international terrorism (State Council, 2003: 7, 14). This is probably why the
BSR was hardly mentioned at the meeting.
One reason for cautious optimism is the gradual linking in of the cities in
the Russian northwest to the regionalizing environment. In particular, the
strong international dimension of the St. Petersburg tercentenary celebrations is encouraging (Joenniemi and Morozov, 2003). Such ‘meeting points’,
where ‘languages, cultures, confessions intersect’ (Margelov, 2003), could
indeed acquire a role of their own, but so far they figure more as interfaces
between established identities than as sites for the development of new ones.
The unique situation of the Kaliningrad exclave is discussed in Russia almost
exclusively as a problem, while the idea of taking advantage of its special
position and turning it into the ‘pilot region’ for Russia–EU cooperation, put
forward in the 1999 ‘Strategy for the Development of Relations with the
EU’ (Strategiya, 1999: 26), remains to be filled with content. Attention
remains focused on the ‘big’ issues, such as energy dialogue and security
(including anti-terrorist measures), which tend to concentrate resources on
bilateral relations between Moscow and Brussels, while the existence of
transnational cooperation at the local level is largely neglected in the public
debate. The passionate discussion about the prospects for visa-free travel
between Russia and the EU can be interpreted as a sign of Russia’s willingness to accept more transparent borders, but one should not forget that it
stays within the limits of bilateralism and reciprocity. No one dares to propose
any unilateral concessions on the part of Russia, despite the fact that visas
remain one of the major obstacles in the way of increasing inward tourism,
especially in the Russian northwest. On the contrary, the 2002 decision to
introduce visas for cruise passengers, which had a visible adverse effect on the
number of tourists, still holds firm (Ovchinnikov and Strela, 2003).
Security no longer informs Russia’s image of the region, but there is
nothing to replace security as the basis for region-building. Environment is
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39(3)
too narrow a field, while transport networks are discussed exclusively in
modernist terms: thus, completion of the first stage of the Baltic Oil Pipeline
System led to an immediate, and justified in terms of national interest, redirection of Russian oil transit from the Latvian port of Ventspils to Primorsk
(Orlov, 2003). As a result, the Russian image of the BSR tends to break
apart into several groups of states, the most significant being the Baltic
states and the Nordic countries, with the latter usually still enjoying a much
more positive image than the former. Besides, the great foreign policy
achievements of Putin’s era — the rapprochement with the US, the Rome
agreements with NATO, and the intensifying dialogue with the EU — all
tend to shift attention to the grand projects where the ‘federal centre’ in
Moscow plays the central role, and thus to peripheralize the Baltic area in
foreign policy thinking.
Conclusions
The analysis of Russian political discourse in relation to the Baltic states
seems to suggest that a desecuritization of Russia’s national identity paves
the way towards better relations with its neighbours in the Baltic Sea area.
An exceptionally favourable constellation of all major factors, such as economic recovery and an outstanding external situation, combined with a
sophisticated handling of identity issues, alleviated the identity crisis in
which Russia had found itself ever since the collapse of the Soviet Union.
One of the key manifestations of the crisis-ridden world-view, the fear of
isolation from Europe and doubts about Russia’s belonging to the
European ‘civilization’, has significantly receded, and this has made redundant the image of the Baltic states as an embodiment of the ‘false’, antiRussian Europe. Russian society is no longer afraid of NATO enlargement,
is ready for a constructive dialogue on the issue of the Russian-speakers,
and is getting closer to the enlarging EU. For all these reasons, security is no
longer the framework concept for Russian understanding of regional
affairs.
However, security has not been substituted by any other major concept
which could serve as a foundation for future Russian policy in the Baltic
Sea area. As a result, there are no signs that someone, either in Moscow or
elsewhere (for instance, in St. Petersburg as the capital of the NorthWestern Federal District), in the government or in the private sector, is trying to define the future Russian approach to the problems and
opportunities of the Baltic Rim. The policies of President Putin’s administration are framed by the modernist concept of national interest, in which
the inherently transnational and post-territorial idea of the BSR does not
fit well. On a larger scale, security — in the context of the war against terrorism — is still the overwhelming mode of thinking, and this can hardly
promote debordering and openness to the world ‘out there’. The region is
mostly perceived as several groups of states, and although it is unlikely to
disappear from the Russians’ mental map of Europe, one cannot expect
Russia to offer any innovative ideas about the future of the Baltic area.
MOROZOV: RUSSIA IN THE BALTIC SEA REGION
329
It is certainly not a disaster that the Russian political elite is so far unable
to conceive of regional cooperation in a less than zero-sum-game way. The
preconditions for creative thinking are there, first of all in the sense that
Russia today fears neither its neighbours in the BSR nor the consequences
of regionalization. However, it is regrettable that these preconditions are
not availed of, and we are thus missing an opportunity to start building a
new Russia in the spirit of new Europe, and not after the models of the
nineteenth century. An optimistic reading of the situation would be to put
all one’s hopes onto the years 2004–05. In 2004, Russia has gone through its
election campaign, while the EU and NATO have completed their most significant rounds of enlargement. The 2003 election campaign, unlike the one
in 1999, has not significantly increased tensions in Russia’s relations with
the Baltic states and NATO, but it has certainly been a distraction for the
decision-makers. The effect of the enlargements has been more or less the
same throughout the area, and their completion might leave a void to be
filled by a new grand project. There are some grounds for hope that the history of the Baltic Rim is only beginning.
Notes
1. I deliberately use the term new Europe (without quotation marks) together
with ‘new’ Europe later on to emphasize that, in my opinion, a truly new post-Cold
War arrangement on the European continent should be something much wider and
more substantial than the division over President Bush’s unilateralism.
2. For a detailed discussion of the changing Russian attitude to the Baltic’s
NATO membership, see Kramer (2002).
3. The advertisement of paint under the trademark Korall in the St. Petersburg
underground was observed by the author in May–June 2003.
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VIATCHESLAV MOROZOV is Associate Professor of European
Studies at the School of International Relations of the St. Petersburg
State University.
Address: Universitetskaya nab., 7/9, 199034, St. Petersburg, Russia.
[email: [email protected]]